Another Day, Another Lame-o #HillaryEmails Excuse | Ethics on Blog#42

The New York Times posted a piece on the explanations recently offered by Clinton and her staff on why she opted to run government email from a home server.

‘Hillary Clinton and her advisers have offered a series of explanations over the last year for her decision to use a private email server as secretary of state, a decision that she said again on Thursday had been “a mistake.”’

Before I even got to the latest hare-brained excuse, I got stuck on the last two words in the quote above. The decision to switch to a private email server was a deliberate one that, we are finding out, was the subject of much discussion before, during and after the setup was completed. Had this been anyone else, someone without any legal training or a long history of walking among the giants in this nation and, indeed, the world’s top politicians, I might have given Clinton a pass. But after decades of navigating very treacherous political waters, almost falling in rough currents herself multiple times, such a deliberate act to circumvent federal laws on preserving government documents is hardly what one can chalk up to a mistake that won’t be repeated.

If there are mistakes in all this, they are the Clinton team’s complete lack of preparedness in handling a fallout it was too arrogant to foresee and, once she was caught, not having the good sense and respect to give the public explanations that rise above stupid.

Decades after the advent of the home computer, a lack of adeptness simply isn’t a valid excuse. When even my own 100 year old “grand-mère” can figure out today’s TV remotes and microwave oven settings, Hillary Clinton only being able to work a CrackBerry but not a desktop just doesn’t pass the sniff test.

And this is the thing, Clinton’s excuses over the years have most often come with the desperate je ne sais quoi that are typically borne out of the desperate early morning hours when bad ideas sound good and people agree to anything just to get to sleep. This is how much respect is being shown the American people. Clinton is supposed to be a pro. She’s seasoned and more qualified than… that interloper Bernie Sanders. She’s supposed to be the progressive who gets things done. She’s supposed to be above-board. She’s supposed to be ready to hit the ground running! Instead, she keeps hitting the ground.

Remember, all that Wall Street money hasn’t had any affect on her decision making process. But yet, when it comes to ‘splaining something as simple as why you decided to run a likely highly classified email operation from home, against the rules, without asking for permission from the boss first, the explanation is that she can do Blackberry but not a desktop computer?

Get outta here! Now, do tell us why it was so important to keep government communications from the public again?

Whereas Bill Clinton has always been able to get away with that stereotypical sly Southern aura, Hillary was never able to get that Clinton funk to work for her. Her repeated inept attempts at Bill’s “slick” have forever marked her as dishonest. Calling her that isn’t sexist, as she often complains. Allowing her husband to continue to get away with it, is.

Related:

What We Know About HillaryClinton’s Private Email Server

A private email server used by Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state has been the focus of a half-dozen inquiries and legal proceedings, including a report released Wednesday by the State Department’s inspector general and a continuing F.B.I. investigation into whether she or others mishandled classified information.